Apex
by Hawki
Summary: Oneshot: Things had gone wrong for the Initiative from the moment it had arrived in Andromeda. The Scourge, the Uprising, the kett, golden worlds not being so golden. Added to which that her brother was in a coma, her father was dead, and she had an AI who couldn't stop making terrible jokes, was it any surprise that she couldn't sleep?


**Apex**

If a story was only a few decades old, did it count as a fable?

Sara Ryder didn't know. What she did know was that at some point after Jon Grissom passed through the Charon Relay and FTL travel became a thing, there was a rumour that looking outside a ship travelling at FTL speeds could turn you mad. Something about moving at speeds the human body wasn't meant to travel at, combined with beholding a sight that the human eye was not meant to behold. She suspected that it was a rumour that had sprung up in the context of the time. Here was Earth, overpopulated, over-exploited, its flora and fauna pushed to the brink, and people jetting off to Mars, to Pluto, and Arcturus. All that, and now they were breaking bread with alien species, one of which they'd got into a war with. Terra Firma had formed decades after humanity had left its home system, but its ideology was one that had its roots long prior.

Far as she knew, there was no truth to the rumour at all. Nothing in human or alien science suggested that there was anything inherently dangerous about travelling at FTL speeds, and having spent over six centuries doing such a thing herself, she was still here. Not on the _Hyperion_, mind you, but on the _Tempest_. Travelling through the Heleus Cluster at faster-than-light speeds, in a galaxy bereft of mass relays, but replete with things that wanted to kill you. Travelling, sitting in her quarters, and wondering about stories and fables. Because even with the shutters of her quarters down, even with the light of FTL travel cut off from her, there was one fact that she couldn't ignore.

_I can't sleep._

Her body clock was out of whack, what with shifting from Earth, to _Hyperion_, to Nexus time, but even so, she'd been up for over 18 hours, and still couldn't drift off. The bed was fine. The light was kept outside her field of vision. Those two drinks she'd had with Kosta earlier had failed to make her sleepy, and right now, it was tempting to just go get another one for the hell of it. Sitting at the desk, she doodled away on a data pad, letting some nightmarish visage take form on the screen in front of her. If there was a shrink here (and no, Doctor P'terro didn't count), they might have said it was overcoming trauma. If there was a shrink here, she'd have told them to find an airlock. Though on second thought, if they could start yammering on about all the things that people did in psych evals, then maybe, just maybe, she could find some sleep.

"**Pathfinder Ryder. Based on your endorphin levels and elevated blood pressure, I would advise that you take rest."**

She grit her teeth and continued to draw. "Get out of my head, SAM."

"**Of course, Pathfinder."**

Sara blinked. She looked around the room, before silently kicking herself for it. SAM wasn't here. SAM was on a ship light years away, communicating with her via an implant that would have been illegal in the Milky Way. Old habits died hard.

"SAM?"

Other things died too easily.

"SAM, are you there?"

People as well.

"**Yes Pathfinder. I remain in constant contact with you via your implant."**

"Oh. Right." A silence lingered in the room, one that even the faint hum of the ship couldn't break.

"**Is there something you need?"**

"Oh, nothing. Just…" She sighed. "Sorry. I'm not used to people following orders so readily."

"**I do not understand."**

"When I say get out of my head, you're meant to object before doing so." She paused, realizing the potential path this could set her down. "Like, not asking you to do that all the time, but…do you understand what I'm saying?"

"**In part. Organics have a tendency to say one thing and mean another."**

"Exactly." Sara leant back in her chair and rubbed her eyes. "See? You're getting the hang of it."

"**If only I had arms to grab 'it.'"**

Sara snorted. "Was that a joke, SAM?"

"…**I suppose so, Pathfinder. Though I've been working on several others."**

Sara felt a chill run down her neck at that suggestion. "That really won't be necessary."

"**What did the astronaut say when he was told to go to the Dog Star?"**

"I really don't-"

"**Are you Sirius?"**

Sara groaned, thinking of shrinks, airlocks, and the notion of going there herself.

"**Why would you expose a dirty ship to space? Because it's easiest to clean it with a vacuum cleaner."**

Sara buried her face in her hands, thinking that the airlock was too tame. Maybe the armoury. She could surely find a loaded pistol there.

"**I assume from your lack of laughter that these jokes need work."**

"You think?" Sara murmured.

"**I think at a speed made possible via quantum computing. Though to 'think,' as you put it in that context, is that your lack of ability to sleep stems from stress that you have yet to relieve yourself of."**

Sara didn't say anything. She just leant back in her chair and rubbed her eyes. Despite the climate controls, she found her hand catching sweat from her forehead. One that was beginning to pound away, like a jackhammer trying to escape from her skull.

"**Is there anything you would like to discuss? Projections for Eos perhaps?"**

"Projections," she snorted. "You mean, besides being inimical towards life, with the expectation that I somehow solve it?"

"**I suppose that is the crux of the matter."**

"But hey, why stop there?" Sara got to her feet and began pacing around. "I mean, let's see. The golden worlds aren't so golden. There's a band of dark energy screwing everything up. My brother's in stasis, my father's dead, and I'm the new Pathfinder. Which also means that Cora's pissed off with me, and sad little fact is that I can't blame her. But I can't answer why dad made me Pathfinder, because there's this God damn memory lock thing going on, and it only gets unlocked through triggers I can't control. Meanwhile, over twenty-thousand people are waiting for a new home, and that's to say nothing of the missing arks. The Nexus is barely operating, its command staff are at each other's throats, and one of them, Addison, has a stick up her arse so long that it's shifted into mine. So bearing all this in mind, right now I'm on the way to a planet named Eos, in a ship that's named after Shakespeare's last play, where I not only have to find a way to make a planet viable, but also have to solve a murder mystery, because hey, why not? This coming after having to solve sabotage on the Nexus within twenty-four hours of arriving. And that's to say nothing of the kett, proving that in addition to everything else that's gone wrong, we can't even get first contact right." She came to a stop, breathing and sweating heavily, that jackhammer ready to burst out right now.

"**Anything else?" **SAM asked.

Sara shook her head, and flopped down on the bed, face first. "No," she murmured.

"**Just checking. Though if you wanted to list everything else that went wrong, you could add the death of Founder Jien Garson to that list, plus the Nexus Uprising. Though, of course, both occurred before your arrival."**

"No." She let out a groan and put the pillow over her head. "I hate my life."

"**If I may say so, Pathfinder, self-loathing does not become a member of the Andromeda Initiative."**

"Yeah? Well, it beats self-deprecation."

"**I would contend that it is not the case. Though may I venture that out of all those things, it is the kett bothering you the most at this point in time?"**

Sara frowned. She slowly lifted off half the pillow off her head, looking up at the ceiling, and the LED that was far too bright for her liking. "How so?" she murmured.

"**You left them towards the end of your list. I have noticed in humans and some other species that when they, quote, vent their spleen…"**

"_Excuse me?"_

"…**that they leave the most egregious issue towards last. This being in addition to your sketch on your data pad, which is reminiscent of the behaviour of veterans of the First Contact War of 2157, where some would sketch their turian foes as a means of dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder. That, coupled with the data Tiran Kandros showed you concerning Strike Team Kilo, leads me to assume that as of this point in time, the kett are your largest concern."**

Sara lifted the other half of the pillow off her head. She sat down, cradling it towards her stomach, like she had in the years when her mother was still alive, and when Scott would tease her for not having outgrown her teddy bear. A time that was over 600 years ago, and millions of light years away.

"You've been keeping up with things SAM," she murmured. "How'd you know about that?"

"**What you know, I know."**

"You know I'm considering ripping my implant out?"

"**No. But if so, that would be highly inadvisable."**

"Try me," she murmured, before also adding, "I know about Strike Team Kilo."

"**And is that something you wish to discuss?"**

Sara remained silent. SAM might be able to see what she saw, and hear what she heard, but as far as she was aware, he didn't have access to her mind. To her consciousness, or her soul, or whatever thousands of names dozens of species had come up for the concept. So, as she cast her mind back to the feed Kandros had shown her, of the strike team falling back from the kett on one of the cluster's worlds, of projectiles tearing through flesh, and the kett's hounds tearing into those unable to make it to the shuttle in time…SAM might have seen that feed in some form or another. But that black pit within her breast, that feet of being pulled down to oblivion, to meet those she'd sent to die…that was her feeling. And hers alone.

"Apex," she whispered.

Not a feeling that she had to keep to herself, she reflected.

"**I'm sorry?"**

"Apex, SAM. You heard me."

"**APEX. Terminology for Nexus forces. Why?"**

She grunted. "Doesn't matter." She leant back down on the bed. "Doesn't matter at all."

"**Your tone of voice indicates that it does, Pathfinder. If I may be so bold as to suggest that you explain the matter behind your…matter."**

Hearing that, she wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. But instead, she did neither, and began to talk. "I can't stop thinking about it," she murmured. "New galaxy, new planets, new species. And the first thing we do upon meeting them is open fire."

"**By all indications, the kett fired first."**

"I know, SAM, but…" She bit her lip. "Is it fair to say that the kett are native to Andromeda?"

"**By all indications that is the case. There is so far no evidence of them originating from another galaxy."**

"Right. So, we're the aliens here. Whatever they're doing in Heleus, they got here first, and we crashed in. And what's happened is the same thing that's happened across history." She shifted her eyes, to where her father's bookcase had been. To the journals of Lewis and Clark. Pathfinders of their own. People who might not have taken part in the displacement of one group of people by another, but had led to it in their own way. The shores of the New World. First contact with the turians. Now, Andromeda. It was as if humanity was fated to come into conflict everywhere it trod. And in the annals of human history, she'd taken part in it. Annals that would sooner remember the name of Alec Ryder and Jien Garson, but annals that would record her name either way. For good or ill. Likely depending on whose history was being told.

And at the end of the day, her father was still dead because of her. Her brother was as good as dead. As of a few hours ago, two humans, two turians, and one asari were dead because she'd given the go-ahead for the mission that had cost them their lives. All this, and they hadn't even arrived on Eos yet.

"Apex," she murmured, "maybe all this…it's just the apex for us. Conflict. Death. The lot of it."

"**Some might say that's a rather pessimistic view on humanity."**

"Well you tell me SAM. You're the AI who gets to look at us from the outside. When you consider human history, heck, galactic history, what do you think?"

SAM didn't say anything. Maybe he had no answer. Or perhaps he had one and didn't wish to share it lest he condemn his creators. She'd seen one of her father's memories, how he'd laid out his vision of organic-AI relations to Anita Goyle. So far, SAM hadn't turned on them, and she didn't think he would. But on the other hand, if conflict was inevitable between races, then why serve creators who kept screwing up?

She yawned and went back to resting on the bed. Her head on the pillow, her back on the mattress, her thoughts scattered to the astral winds. "How much longer till Eos, SAM?"

"**At your current velocity, I estimate arrival in seven hours and twenty-eight minutes."**

"Great, great." She yawned. "Wake me if something bad happens."

"**Of course, Pathfinder."**

_That was a joke SAM. Lots of bad stuff has already happened._

Nevertheless, she found sleep taking her…even as her memories lingered in Habitat 7. On words exchanged and shots fired. Of first contact gone awry. Of a conflict that seemed intractable, and the bodies of the dead, lain at her feet.

Sleep took her in the end.

So did the nightmares.

* * *

_A/N_

_So I've finally got round to playing _Andromeda_. And, um, y'know how lots of people say it doesn't live up to the games that came before it? Well, while I'm no stranger to having 'oddity opinions,' I'm afraid this is a case where I agree. And one of the reasons why is the kett._

_So, I know that the kett are "really bad people who do really bad things," but what bugs me is that up to where I've played so far (Eos), there's absolutely no shades of grey to them. Despite the fact that the Andromeda Initiative is from outside the galaxy, that they're moving into an area that the kett beat them to, the kett are unambiguously portrayed as "the bad guys." Oh sure, you can voice how it's a shame that first contact ended in gunfire, but any regrets go by the wayside as we're forced to shoot at the kett like they're cannon fodder. And in case you ask about ME1, I feel the reason I didn't feel that way about the geth is that they were portrayed as the aggressor, which they were (an unprovoked attack on Eden Prime), and as robots, I can buy them being totally amoral. The kett though? Not so much. Even the batarians got more ambiguity in the first game. With the kett, I still have a "wait, are we the baddies?" feelings, but the game's gone out of its way to assure me that we aren't._

_Course, the game would alter this, but in the meantime, I drabbled this up._

_Also SAM's jokes aren't that bad. Really. Why does Sara keep groaning? :(_


End file.
